The blood of your father, but your father needn't be blood — Balthazar's words ring in Sam's ears as he stalks through Bobby's salvage yard. His breaths barely register — at that, he notices the condensation more than the unperturbed rise and fall of his chest. Each time he screams Castiel's name and gets nothing for his trouble, Sam's palms itch with one of those instincts that he gets — the ones that Dean says he has to control, the ones that are effective but inconsiderate, that make Sam's muscles twitch and burn —

"Castiel!" Sam shouts, coming to a halt by a dirt-coated, dilapidated truck. He kicks the tire's rim hard enough that it hurts — and really hurts. Shocks of pain shooting up his foot, ringing in his knee — he kicks at the truck again, grits his teeth, slams a fist into the hood with enough force to shake his arm all the way up to his shoulder — and for a moment, it gets his heart racing. Lightens his chest. Makes his lungs writhe and his stomach churn and everything inside him feel cramped — feel anything at all, and feel ittangibly — feel human.

For the moment that it hangs around, Sam loses everything else in experiencing the twists and roils, biting his lower lip as his breath hitches in his throat. Feeling things like this regularly is about the only thing Sam misses about his soul and even so ... he can't deny that being without the thing makes life easier. Nothing gets to him — not the cold winds that charge through Sioux Falls, or pain when it hangs around for any appreciable amount of time (it never does), or the thought that Dean is probably going to get himself into shit with Death and find that he can't just get out of it by smirking, puffing out his chest, and telling Big Daddy Reaper —

"Well, don't you know that I'm Dean Winchester," Sam mutters to himself. He shoves his hands into his pockets and swaggers down an aisle of busted up sedans and hatchbacks — the out-of-place, back-of-the-yard things that Bobby keeps away from the front so as to maintain the illusion of his scraps being only the manliest. Going past a car so broken down Sam can't tell if it's a Chrysler or not, he picks up his older brother's disaffected slouch, and the strut he wears as if no one can see through it.

Still aiming to vindicate himself to no one, he snaps, "I'm Dean, I have to save everyone without caring about myself, even if that means that I just condescend to everybody."

Sam grimaces and kicks an empty beer can toward the nearest fence. He needs to get his vessel scarred. Patricide — it's so easy a solution — and Bobby's just back in the house; Sam could take an axe to Bobby's neck, go after him with a chainsaw or slip arsenic in the chili, and he knows that he would never regret it — would never be required or able to regret it ever again —

"Castiel!"

The name slices through the frigid air and ricochets off the busted doors and broken windshields, and still there's no answer. Just Sam — taller than most of the cars, wearing only a ripped flannel over his t-shirt because not having a soul makes him warmer — yelling to the welkin, for all the total lack of progress that makes. And he stares up into the abyss, where there would be stars if the night weren't so overcast, or even if the clouds would just get nudged out of the way of the Heavenly lights.

That's an awkward phrase, Sam thinks, and spies another empty beer can, one with holes going up and down its sides, probably some relic of Dean doing target practice. Sam rolls his shoulders, narrows his eyes — looks up again and once more calls out for Cas. Wind blows across the yard, but doesn't let any stars shine through — and it occurs to Sam that this winter's gone without snow for too long. Maybe some side-effect of all the angels killing each other, like whichever one handled the changing season got shanked in the combat and Cas just hasn't found a replacement yet.

Shaking his head, Sam resumes his round through the decrepit collection of cars, tries to think of reasons not to go through with the plan Balthazar handed to him — reasons that actually matter, and reasons other than well, it's not like Bobby hasn't come back to life before. The only one that gives him pause is the thought of hunting something, or luring something here so he could kill it. He'd find it easy enough, undoing any of Bobby's protective measures, waiting for some thing or another to storm in, hungry for blood, then hacking it up just for the sake, the rush, of doing something.

Sam heaves a sigh and crashes down onto the hood of an old Toyota — blue and anonymous, like he likes, the first thing he ever hot-wired, when he was twelve, and Dean was bored, and he decided that it was high time Sam learned hot to unlawfully claim a car. They found the thing at the back of the motel parking lot, and it looked like it'd been there for long enough that no one would miss it. It made for a nice joyride to the nearest arcade, but now it creaks underneath of Sam as though it's on its last legs, and he tries to summon up more than just the memory of how he felt that day — how his heart pounded as he worked the wires around, hoping that the engine would just kick into gear already and spare him the trouble of tangling things up further; how a weight lifted off his shoulders when it did, and how he felt like he was flying; how his heart glowed with pride when Dean smiled, clapped him on the back, and shouted, Nice one, Sammy!

"CAS!" Sam's throat stings this time, and when he swallows, it burns like his saliva's turned acidic.

But this pain doesn't get Sam to stop or think — he just calls for Castiel again. He doesn't notice how holding up his shoulders gets harder — how his spine sags and folds over as though he's taken on more than he can carry, as though he's turning into Dean and trying to save the world before snagging a breakfast of beer and drive-thru food. Sam screams for that stupid fucking angel, then another time, and then a fourth on top of that because he knows that it's been too long to still be reasonable but he doesn't care, God dammit, Cas; all he knows is that there's nothing else he can do ... just raise his voice until it gets a response, and wonder why everything else in the world — and off it, too, given Cas's conduct for the past eighteen months — matter to that idiot more than —

Sam cuts that thought off before it can go further, and for a moment, he's aware of nothing — just blackness and an absence of anything resembling feeling. When he comes back, there's a hole in the Toyota's windshield, glass in his fingers and his knuckles, and blood charging down his arm like it's running for its life. He kicks the door and hates the thing when the pain it causes doesn't live up to the pain he felt with the rim he had his toes on earlier. Once more, he screams for Castiel — bellows the moron's name, curses up a blue streak of less than friendly epithets for him, and tries to ignore how his throat burns in protest, how something in the back of it tickles and makes him, more than once, double over in a coughing fit. In the spasms, his lungs threaten to come up, but never make good on that offer; they just go on flopping around as he hacks and spits and wonders what Cas is doing in Heaven that's so damn important he can show up whenever Dean wants him, but never for anyone else.

This time when Sam jams his fist through a window, he's perfectly lucid — he hears the crash, doesn't flinch at the pierce of jagged edges into his skin, curses Castiel at the flash of pain. And then it hits him, harder than he hit the car — he's going about this all wrong. Prayer, he remembers, is not meant to come in screams and loud displays. Anger has its place, but angels won't listen to it, not even when they're guilty of it themselves. He's alone now; the only person he's in danger of keeping awake is Bobby — and the only way to get Castiel here is on his own terms. Quiet prayer. A focus on devotion, and faith, and on his thoughts, on the feelings he doesn't have.

He picks one of the bigger shards out of his middle finger as he slouches back to the Toyota's hood. "Cas," Sam sighs, then repeats the name for good measure — just to make sure that his message reaches the right angel extension, or however they send prayers to their recipients upstairs. "Look, man, I know we didn't part on good terms..."

That's a cute euphemism for it. Probably not the most accurate one, but nevertheless, Sam closes his eyes, leans his head back, grips onto the car in place of folding his hands in prayer.

"And I know you probably don't want to see me right now..."

Understandably. Sam wouldn't want to see any of the people who'd threatened to kill him either — but for the first time, some embers in his chest start smoldering, and if this feeling is like the memories he has of it ... Sam's certain that this has to be hope and it worms around his stomach like an old friend, trying to find the best place to settle in and wait.

"But ... look, Cas, we have to talk." Sam shifts on his perch and the stick of chalk in his jeans pocket rubs against his leg. He thinks that summoning Cas, the way he did Balthazar, would have made this nonsense easier — but he can't think of any way in which that would have helped his situation. "I can't talk to anybody else about this — no one else knows enough, and..."

Not that Cas cares what Sam might need to talk about — in an instant, the words going through Sam's head turn from earnest approximations of emotional affect into —

"It's just ... I think I found this thing. Dean's off with Death, so he can't pick up his phone, and none of Bobby's books has anything to say about it ... but it might be one of your relics —" Shit, though, what can Sam offer as a possibility — Moses is out, and Lot, and Indiana Jones — he just needs one of Pastor Jim's stories, any of Pastor Jim's stories, something — "It looks kind of like a spear — antique Roman, at the earliest, and there's this stain on the head—"

A rustling of wings cuts Sam off, accompanied by a gust stronger than the other ones that've come through — Sam almost smiles as he hears that too familiar growl, "I won't appreciate it if you're lying to me again, Sam."

The expression twisting up his lips falls from a smile into a superior, sword's-edge smirk, and he shrugs, turns to face Castiel — Nothing about the angel looks together, or stable, or like he wants to be here, talking to the Winchester he's been all too happy to insult before. His hair's more bedraggled than it usually gets, all mussed up, with the care of a corpse being road-hauled. His trench-coat's just as ruffled, his tie undone and shirt untucked, and singes line the edges of his clothes like the dark circles that frame his eyes — briefly, Sam wonders if he's really been dragging Jimmy's body through the angelic civil war, because it just seems impractical —

And he loses that thought when Cas wobbles, trying to take a step toward him, when the stench of at least three kinds of liquor smacks Sam upside the nostrils. Finding the source takes less than half a second: there's whisky reeking out of Cas's mouth, and brandy from behind his ears, and a foul cocktail of rum and bourbon from the pores down on his neck — and somewhere, there's probably some poor sap waking up to find his store ransacked and emptied out by something that broke all the windows and was nice enough not to clean up the glass.

"The Christ spear," Cas snaps, bringing Sam back around from observation-mode. "The Holy Lance of Longinus — where is it. If you've even found it."

"The Lance of Longinus sounds like something out of an anime," Sam points out, with some vague memory of one college acquaintance or other saying a similar name in his summary of one series or another; they all sounded the same to Sam, so who knew, maybe all of them had some Lance of Longinus running around in their universes. To Cas's blank expression and tilted head, he sighs and explains, "Japanese cartoons."

"This has nothing to do with pornography." Sam almost questions what Japanese cartoons this Angel Of The Lord All In Capital Letters has been watching in his free time, but Cas makes the answer obvious on his own: "Dean told you not to call me down here unless you have something serious for me, didn't he?"

And hearing his brother's name shouldn't make Sam's stomach flip over, or make his palms itch to punch one of the Toyota's remaining windows — but it does. He keeps his lips together but still grinds his teeth, wrinkles his nose, rocks back and forth on his feet — and finally, he bites out: "Who says I don't have something serious in mind?"

The question elicits the closest thing he's ever heard to a chuckle coming from Cas — and the effect is poisonous, instead of pleasant. His gravelly voice has a sandpaper quality when he tries to laugh, and it grates at Sam's ears so much that he's downright happy — or as close to that as he gets anymore — for the attempted insult that comes next: "When you can manage to appropriately discern decent companions on your misadventures, Sam, then I'll accept your judgment as to what is and is not a serious discussion subject."

"We needed Meg's help—" A fact that makes Sam want to get his hands on the nearest vampire, demon, shifter, or whatever, just so he can kill it. Not because they worked with Meg, but because repeating the fact or the rationale helps nobody.

And, on some level, because they worked with Meg, and because thinking of her nearly makes him shiver, makes the embers that Cas kindled threaten to start a fire. Because she and Sam have a history — because, even with other memories out of his grasp, Sam remembers everything about having her inside him — not the events themselves, but the way his skin crawled, and how she wormed around his mind, enjoying every minute of it.

Bringing her up makes him roll his shoulders and kick at the dirt, advance toward Cas as though he's the next best potential murder subject — and, if he weren't an angel, he probably would be — The whole thing teases him with the kind of feeling that he can only remember, then yanks it away. And getting up into Cas's personal space, close enough that the angel straightens up (some half-baked attempt, Sam thinks, at making him feel like Jimmy's tall enough to threaten more than a small child) — so near to him that the rest of the air gets drowned out by his stench of booze and fire — that proximity is the only thing that makes Sam consider the possibility of getting his hands onfeeling again. He takes a moment and a deep breath, and puts his thoughts in simple terms, all Castiel seems capable of understanding:

"We didn't like it anymore than you did — Hell, we probably liked it even less than you did."

"Forgive me if I very much doubt that. Being in the same room with an abomination of her caliber offends my very essence—"

"Couldn't tell." Sam scoffs and his eyebrows threaten to arch off his forehead. Nothing Cas snaps in response actually gets through to him — half of it's in Enochian, and Sam just doesn't want to hear the rest, but he gets the point. Something fiery flashes behind Cas's eyes; he scowls, his lips and brows carving deep lines of disgust across his face; faintly, barely discernible above the sounds of their breaths, Sam makes out the agitated rustling of wings and Cas tries to make his back straighter still. Fails, since he has no more spine to align — but the effort comes through clearly, the strain in his muscles as tangible as the growled what he spits out.

Sam smirks, shrugs, turns and starts to walk away. "Nothing, Cas, nothing. I'm just saying you and Meg looked cosy enough with each other when you were making out."

This time, the whispering, feathery sound burns through the air, and Sam nearly avoids crashing into Cas — the idiot angel just snaps into his path and hisses, "It was a response that I could not control — something that you of all people ought to understand."

Cas pauses. His eyes travel up Sam's face, then stop to hold Sam's gaze. They say nothing, each daring the other to make the first move — but neither does anything. Underneath the tension, there's an undercurrent of I know you are, but what am I, of I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you, what are you going to do about it? Sam gets down closer to Cas — leaning toward his mouth, saying nothing, but edging closer, closer still, until —

"I might need to call on your brother," Castiel hisses, sticking his nose so close to Sam's that every other instinct dies away into kiss him kiss him kiss him kiss him. All of Sam's muscles burn to gives into that urge — he doesn't want to listen, but then Cas keeps talking: "His most recent plan is foolish — moreso than is usual for him, but I might have other alternatives for him."

Sam chuckles in the pit of his throat. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Spells, magical objects — similar means of approximating a soul's presence that won't leave you psychologically destroyed." They fall silent for long enough that Cas picks up again, "You need help, Sam. You have to understand that we're concerned for you."

"Yeah, thanks a bunch." Sam leans in closer to Cas, lets himself hover there a moment, inhales Castiel's breath, the taste of his mouth — then whipsaws back and spits like a viper, "God, you're a dick lately. Moreso than is usual for you."

"My apologies," Cas huffs. "I'll just ask the other angels to put the civil war on hold until it's more convenient for you."

"You could at least try talking Dean down from the Cliffs of Stupidity."

"What Dean does is his prerogative—"

"But he's doing it with my life! How are you seriously going to tell me that it's only his—"

"I've interfered enough already!"

There's something underlying that statement, but Sam doesn't stop to think about it — "It'll be your life he's trying this on next!"

Cas frowns, tilts his head. "I have no idea what you think—"

"Come on, it's not like he cares about you — seriously, how does he talk to you most of the time? … Like you're some fucking child." Sam rounds on Castiel again, once more closes the distance between them, and gets up into Castiel's face with truth, the way that he sees it.

"Dean doesn't care about anybody, Cas. Not me — he cares about Sammy, some memory thing of who I'm supposed to be, but he doesn't care about me. He says he cares about Bobby, Lisa, and Ben, but that's a lie, too. I think you know that's a lie — if you really think about it, he wouldn't have gone anywhere near Lisa ever again if he loved her, but what did he do after I jumped into the Pit—"

"Only what you asked of him, Sam." The confusion's gone from Castiel's eyes, replaced entirely with cold fire. It suits the little thunders that start sneaking into his voice, and Sam chuckles. That doesn't fit the situation, or the heavy air between them, but he doesn't care; Castiel's indignation is just too precious.

"And you know what else that meant?" Now, Sam gets closer to Cas than he's ever been before — not kissing the angel takes willpower, actual concentration. Something pounds in the back of his head, telling Sam that he shouldn't, that this is wrong, that he knows he's not lying, but still perverting the truth — but listening holds less appeal than Castiel's lips. Than almost brushing his own against them. Than feeling his throat tingle at the leftover booze taste in Castiel's mouth.

"Dean abandoned you," he whispers. "My brother left you on your ass, in the middle of the worst moment of your life, after you risked your life to help him over, and over, andover again ..." And Sam turns his head ever-so-slightly, as though he might actually lean in to kiss him — but he pauses everything and lingers there, holds still like he's lulling prey into a false sense of security, waits to see if Cas will try anything ...

He doesn't. Sam licks his lips and chuckles, verges on a barking laugh. "Dean ditched you when you needed him the most ... and he's supposed to be your friend?"

They meet each other's eyes again — Sam's glint, and Castiel's flash.

And finally — Sam can't wait. He runs his tongue alongs his teeth and tries to hold out longer. But resisting doesn't work. He grabs onto Cas's cheeks and jerks him up into a kiss. He grinds his lips into the angel's, grates his teeth along Castiel's lower lip, has to remind himself not to bite yet — not to bite hard enough to draw blood, at least. When he needs a pause to breathe, Sam lets his hands slither up into Castiel's hair — he knots his fingers up in there, tugs, rebounds on the angel.

Cas yelps as Sam's teeth hit him harder, but the sound gets muffled in another kiss, in Sam yanking the angel as far into the embrace as he possibly can. Lips overlap each other, Sam's teeth clash into Castiel's, saliva smears across their mouths and only gets worse when Sam shoves his tongue into Cas's, down Cas's throat. Trying to mimic what's being done to him, Cas slides his own tongue around Sam's mouth, shoving it wherever he finds space; Sam's chuckle comes from a low place in his throat, all animalism and an unspoken, You learn fast, but you'll choke on mine first.

There's no grace to be found anywhere. Just this lip-enveloping mess of a kiss. Just burning, the wet heat between their two mouths, the urge in the back of Sam's mind formore.

One hand comes out of Cas's hair. It splays on Castiel's lower back and Sam holds Cas to his chest as he flings both of their bodies onto the Toyota's hood — and once he has Cas flat on his back, Sam pins him there. Sets his forearms on Cas's shoulders, lets his hips fall against Cas's and puts his weight behind them, assaults Cas's mouth again — biting harder, this time, drawing out the lip-on-lip blows; he batters his lips into Castiel's, drags his chapped ones down the angel's in slow, deliberate strokes. He doesn't just want to kiss Castiel; he wants to leave the little fucker's lips bruised.

They're angry red as he pulls back enough to work on Cas's clothes. Good sign. A very good sign.

He doesn't bother with Cas's buttons — the trenchcoat's open anyway; Sam just rips the shirt apart and, at a grunt of protest from Cas, grinds his hips against the angel's. But he takes more care with getting the clothes off, trailing his fingers down Castiel's shoulders and his chest in slow, caressing movements. But he yanks Cas's belt off, forces his pants and underwear down and lets them fall to Cas's knees. He has the same carelessness about getting his own jeans off — and at the feeling of cold air whipping over his ass and thighs, Sam has to stop and admire the naked body below him.

Castiel — all pale skin and muscles made taut by the angel's grace. Sam goes in for another kiss, this one on Cas's neck, where he bites and gnashes his teeth as though his life depends on it. He doesn't let up until he's sure Cas's skin is red enough — even when Cas grunts, then groans, then fails to muffle a yelp. It's nothing personal, not really, not even as he trails more and more of these violent kisses down Cas's neck, onto his shoulders and his chest, and finally, around his nipple.

Sam bites at it until Cas screams — Sam needs to know that he's good and marked up. Because sooner or later, Dean needs to know how badly he's treated their angel, and how far gone from him Cas is.

And, finally, Sam stops a moment to appreciate his handiwork — the angry red spots that mar Cas's skin, how some of them are already starting to purple, if only around the edges, and how Cas could probably just heal himself but isn't even trying. Sam's lips curl in a smirk and he fixes his eyes on Cas's — behind their steel determination, Sam catches traces of vulnerability — he sees Cas's lips quiver as his mouth falls open, hears the way Cas whines as his cock finally goes hard underneath Sam, and the little hitch in Cas's breath as Sam ruts against him.

"What do you want?" Sam whispers, rubbing his flannel and the cotton of his t-shirt against Cas's bare skin. "Whatever you want — just tell me what it is."

Cas tightens his legs on Sam's hips; he curls them up, knocks his shoes against the fender. "I — I want you to fuck me."

"Did you learn that from the pizza man?" He bites Castiel's lip, gnaws at it, doesn't mind the thought of drawing blood. "Or do you mean it?"

Cas gulps and shakes his head. Halos of blush rise to his cheeks. "I mean it, Sam." He nods with too much energy. "I — I just want ..."

He twists his hands up in Sam's flannel and jerks him down into a kiss.

Sam only breaks away to spit in his own hand and slick up his cock.

And he enters Cas without prepping him or asking if he's ready — he gasps, at first, then whines, and Sam could ask what he's supposed to get from that noise ... but instead, he thrusts into Cas even harder than before. Cas's body responds for him — or maybe he just learned better from the porno than Sam thought — but either way, Sam rocks his hips against Castiel's and Castiel arches his back in ways he shouldn't be able to, getting himself at the perfect angle, and Sam's certain that he's shoving well past Cas's prostate.

But it doesn't matter. Because he feels something; he feels everything. Right down to the hint of regret, the maudlin, sighing strings' note that stirs in him at how Castiel won't look at him — how he's got his eyes closed, how he's not doing more than grunting or sighing, how if he said anything, he'd probably just scream Dean's name. Sam digs his nails into the flesh of Cas's thigh; it makes Cas gasp. He tries dragging them down the angel's chest, focusing more on them than on how he moves his cock, getting the blemishes the right shade of red but being careful enough not to draw blood.

Still, Cas doesn't look at him. Doesn't say his name.

Sam jams his hips into Castiel's — ruts hard enough that his own bones take note, that his dick feels suffocated by just how far he's going. "Are you sleeping?" he snaps. "Come on — best fuck of your life and you're going to sleep through it?" He smacks Castiel's shoulder. "Wake up!"

Cas says nothing, but he opens his eyes, at least. And he meets Sam's glare with one that's buffeted, but still unyielding. Flashing and steely and cold, the way Cas's eyes have been since they first met. Sam's breath stutters for the first time — gets caught in the wrong tube and tries to backpedal and he coughs into the curve of Cas's neck, jabbing his nails into the same shoulder he just smacked so Cas won't fall back and hit the car.

God, I love your eyes like that falls out of his lips without him thinking of it — he doesn't even recognize the words until they're out; all he knows is that he feels something.Everything. His heart racing, his pulse pounding in his ears and behind his temples, the warmth of Castiel's skin, and so many things curling around in his stomach, tossing and turning and flinging it around — and his heart doesn't jump, doesn't rejoice, the way it used to, back when he was still in awe of this Angel of the Lord ...

But Sam still coughs up an I love you, idiot angel, hopes that Cas didn't hear him, that the words got lost and all Cas knows is that Sam exhaled on his neck again.

And even if he knows what got said, this is progress enough for Sam. He picks up where he left off, even gives Castiel a tender kiss — one without any biting. One that Sam would give a lover.

Everything's fine, but then, Sam tries going deeper, deeper — he pulls Cas up by his shoulder, grinds his teeth down Cas's neck, hisses at him — God, you're tight. Dean told me he took care of that ... or did he buy you some girl? Come on, stop making that face. You can take more, can't you? You are an angel … — but a thrust too hard takes them by surprise. Sam hits a slick spot on the hood, he puts too much force into it — and they fall. His back hits the dirt. Edged pebbles scrape the back of his neck.

But he looks up at Cas, still red-faced and breathing heavily, sitting on his lap as if on a throne — clenching his muscles around Sam's dick and moving himself up and down in lazy motions. Moaning, and God, that angel moans like he has a personal composer, waiting just to make him sound perfect. One of his hands stays on the ground, steadying him.

He lays the other one over Sam's heart, sliding it under the t-shirt and caressing the skin with his warm fingers.

"Dean won't put your soul back in its vessel, Sam," Cas intones, interrupts himself with a gasp as he comes down on Sam's cock again. His fingers clench on Sam's skin, seem to penetrate the barrier and send waves of heat-and-warm-and-relief-and-oh-god-Castiel coursing through Sam's muscles. "I won't let him do it. You have my word."

His fingers tighten further on Sam's chest. Sam answers him with a shudder, a moan, and spilt seed.